World Sustainable Energy Conference 2012

[Ivy Matt]

This week WSEC 2012 is being held in Geneva, Switzerland. The objective:

Present and discuss all sustainable energy solutions and their implementation tools by energy type, quantity, annual investment and cost from now ’til 2050 and beyond. Show the positive impacts of sustainable energies on economies, jobs and health. Provide energy information input to the United Nations Rio+20 Anniversary Summit.

(Emphasis added.)

The technologies being discussed are:

Solar, Hydro, Wind, Geo & Ocean Thermal, Bio Energy, Novel Energy Technologies

Cold fusion researcher Francesco Celani is doing a presentation on LENR at the conference, and also chairing the “Novel Energy Technologies” working group. I don’t know if anyone will be presenting anything related to more conventional high-energy plasma fusion at the conference, but what I have read about the conference doesn’t give me much hope.

Take a look at this chart, and this one, for their opinion of nuclear power. They also have an energy forecast questionnaire and a job forecast questionnaire. “Nuclear power” gets one category in both questionnaires. To be fair, LENR is not mentioned at all, and I get the impression it was a late addition to the conference agenda. I suppose it’s a bit late to bring this up, but I wonder if plasma fusion could also have found a place on the agenda, possibly also under “Novel Energy Technologies”, or if the odds were already stacked against it.

I note that the Rio+20 summit is June 20-22. There’s also a “World Future Energy Summit” next week in Abu Dhabi. Again, I haven’t noticed any particular mention of nuclear fusion there. However, I did see a link to the Zayed Future Energy Prize website. Might be something to take a look at.

[jamesr]

Their ‘True Energy Cost’ bar chart is somewhat biased against nuclear. It always makes me laugh when I see so called scientific analysis like this with its ‘infinite risk’ poking out the top of the graph with the radioactive symbol next to it. Also giving nuclear its own bar is scary red to show the total cost. Why doesn’t it just have it in the green ‘external cost’ section.

The risks from nuclear are well known and quantifiable. There are way more deaths from coal, or hydro electric

Geothermal is hardly risk free either, adding to seismic risks and polluting water supplies

[dennisp]

Yeah that’s pretty silly. Projecting nuclear costs to keep rising doesn’t make a lot of sense either. Standardized, simpler reactors like the AP-1000 should drop in price significantly as we build more of them. Fuel cost is already fairly low, and will drop to almost nothing as IFRs and LFTRs come on line…and those should be reasonably cheap to build, too.

[Rezwan]

The event is organized by Reed Exhibitions, professional event organizers. This event is run for a profit with a specific business model. If we were interested in being in such an event, we could contact the organizers and inform them of this additional “niche market”, and put them to work inviting speakers and so forth. I.e., they would do outreach to attract fusion people and speakers, with the idea that said people would pay fees and so forth. They [fusion people, it is theorized] would attend in the hopes of beneficial networking connections. The fusion community in general hasn’t been very big on such types of activity.

Reed Exhibitions is the world’s leading events organiser, with over 470 events in 37 countries. In 2008 Reed brought together over seven million industry professionals from around the world generating billions of dollars in business. Today Reed events are held throughout the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific, and organised by 38 fully staffed offices.

Reed organises a wide range of events, including exhibitions, conferences, congresses and meetings. Its portfolio of over 470 events serves 44 industry sectors, including: Aerospace & aviation, automobiles, broadcasting, building & construction, electronics, energy, oil & gas, engineering, manufacturing, environment, food service & hospitality, gifts, healthcare, interior design, IT & telecoms, jewellery, life science & pharmaceuticals, machinery, medical education, printing & graphics, property & real estate, security & safety, sports & recreation, travel.

Working closely with professional bodies, trade associations and government departments Reed ensures that each and every event is targeted and relevant to industry needs. As a result, many Reed events are market leaders in their field.

Reed Exhibitions is part of Reed Elsevier Group plc, a FTSE-100 company and world-leading publisher and information provider. In 2007, Reed Elsevier made an adjusted profit before taxation of £998 million on turnover of £4,584 million.

[Rezwan]

998 Million pound profit. From convening conversations.

[jamesr]

A large part of that is from the Elsevier side of the company (28% revenue, but 44% of profits in 2006). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier

They publish a huge proportion of all the high impact journals. Many universities and institutions are up in arms about the high subscription prices they charge, but can’t just stop getting them so there is little left in library budgets for anything else.

[wolfram]

undoubtedly, a reliable open source way of evaluating merit in scientific articles would be a coup in metrology. We’d be able to do away with all those exorbitantly priced journals we use to approximate prestige. Of course it’s tantamount to a method for determining truth, which would be pretty impressive on philosophical level as well pragmatic.

[Rezwan]

wolfram wrote: …a reliable open source way of evaluating merit in scientific articles would be a coup in metrology.

There are likely some open source efforts along these lines. Now to get a list.

Also, the incentive seems to be to churn out stuff, volume thus mattering more than quality, and people spending most their effort churning out stuff rather than working to create an elegant, clear knowledge system. Too many dots, not enough connecting or contextualizing the dots.

[wolfram]

Not enough people making a distinction between making a difference and being important, that’s for sure.

[jamesr]

Further to my comment on Elsevier. The Guardian published this today:
Academic publishers have become the enemies of science

[Rezwan]

Ivy Matt wrote: This week WSEC 2012 is being held in Geneva, Switzerland. The objective:

Cold fusion researcher Francesco Celani is doing a presentation on LENR at the conference, and also chairing the “Novel Energy Technologies” working group. I don’t know if anyone will be presenting anything related to more conventional high-energy plasma fusion at the conference, but what I have read about the conference doesn’t give me much hope.

I was just getting around to doing a post on this issue, only to find that the wsec.ch site is no longer up and running. It looks like a parking page. Wonder what happened. In the meantime, the LENR angle at the conference is getting some press and people are sharing it with me.

The message I get is that the hot fusion field needs to be more proactive.

[wolfram]

jamesr wrote: Further to my comment on Elsevier. The Guardian published this today:
Academic publishers have become the enemies of science

Indeed, one of my chemistry professors would rail against these mooks during lunch, they really cheesed her off. I love how physics articles are widely available on arXiv.

[jamesr]

Maybe the tide is turning. There seems to be a growing opposition to the publishers at the moment:
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2012/01/researchers-boycott-publisher-will-they-embrace-instant-publishing.ars
http://gowers.wordpress.com/2012/01/21/elsevier-my-part-in-its-downfall/

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